
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

BV4~ : 

Chap. Copyright No. 

Shelf. . 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



m Self Life 



.AND THE... 



-* -* 



Christ Cifc 



BY KEV. A. B. SIMPSON. 



♦ ♦ ♦ 




two cents keceived 



PUBLISHED BY Li U iJJ^K ** '5^*V 

THE CHBISTIAN ALLIANCE PUB. CO., * 

South Nyack, n. Y. 









1902 



Copyrighted in 1897 by 
A. B. Simpson. 



The Library 

of Congress 

washington 



NOT I BUT CHEIST. 

"If any man will come after Me, let him deny 
himself, and take up his cross, and follow me." 
Matt. xvi. 24. 

"I have been crucified with Christ, nevertheless 
I live; yet not I but Christ." Gal. ii. 20. 

Here lies the great difference between the 
world's gospel and the Lord's Gospel. The 
world says, when it bids yon good-bye, "Take 
care of yourself/' The Lord says, "Let your- 
self go, and take care of others and the glory of 
your God." The world says, "Have a good 
time, look out for number one." But the world 
gets left in the end, and the last comes in first. 
The man that lets go gets all, and the man who 
holds fast loses what he has, and the Lord's 
words come true — "Whosoever will save his life 
shall lose it, and whosoever will lose his life for 
My sake shall find it." 

So the law of sacrifice is the greatest law in 
earth and heaven. The law of sacrifice is God's 



6 THE SELF LIFE AND THE CHRIST LIFE. 

great law. It is written in earth and every de- 
partment of nature. We tread on the skeletons 
of ten thousand millions of generations that 
have lived and died that we might live. The 
very heart of the earth itself is the wreck of ages 
and the buried life of former generations. All 
nature dies and lives again, and each new devel- 
opment is a higher and larger life built on the 
wrecks of the former. A corn of wheat must 
fall into the ground and die, or else be a 
shrivelled-up seed, but as it dies it lives and 
multiplies, and grows into the beautiful spring, 
the golden autumn and the multiplied sheaves. 
And so it is in the deeper life of the higher 
world, as you rise from the natural to the spir- 
itual. Everything that is selfish is limited by 
its selfishness. The river that ceases to run 
becomes a stagnant pool, but as it flows it grows 
fresher, richer, fuller. 

If you turn your natural eye upon yourself, 
you cannot see anything. It is as you look out 
that the vision of the world bursts upon you. 
The very law of the natural life is love for 
others, caring for others by giving away and 



THE SELF LIFE AND THE CHRIST LIFE. 7 

letting go. It is death and self-destruction to 
be selfish. 

The law of sacrifice is the law of God. God 
who lived in supreme self-sufficiency as the 
Father, Son and Holy Ghost gave Himself. 
God's glory was in giving Himself, and so He 
gave Himself in the creation, in the beauty of 
the universe, so formed that every possible sort 
of happiness could come according to its natural 
law. And then God gave Himself in Jesus 
Christ. "God so loved the world that He gave/' 
He gave His best, gave His all, gave His only 
begotten Son. The law of God is sacrifice. 
He loved until He gave all. 

Then it is the law of Christ Himself. He 
came through God's sacrifice, and He came to 
sacrifice. He laid His honors down, left tlie 
society of heaven for a generation, and lived 
with creatures farther beneath Him than the 
grovelling earth worm is beneath a man. He 
made Himself one of them, and became a 
brother of this fallen race. He was always 
yielding and letting go, always holding back 
His power and not using it. He was always be- 



8 THE SELF LIFE AND THE CHEIST LIFE. 

ing subject to the will of the men beneath Him, 
until at last they nailed Him to the cross. His 
whole life was a continual refusing of Himself, 
carrying their burdens and sharing their sor- 
rows. And so love and sacrifice is the law of 
Christ. "Bear ye one another's burdens, and 
so fulfill the law of Christ." The law of Christ 
is the bearing of others' burdens, the sharing of 
others' griefs, sacrificing yourself for another. 

It is the law of Christianity. It is the law 
of the saint. It is the only way to be saved. 
From the beginning it has always been so. It 
was so on Mt. Moriah where Abraham, the 
father of the faithful, gave up his only child, the 
child of promise. It reached its climax on Mt. 
Calvary. All along, the way was marked by 
blood and sacrifice. Not only did Abraham 
give up his Isaac but Isaac gave up his life and 
all through his life he laid himself down for 
others. We know how he served for his wife, 
and then did not get the one of his choice. 
His was a suffering life, a passive life, a patient 
life. And so Joseph died to his circumstances. 
Because he was to rise so high, he must go down 



THE SELF LIFE AND THE CHRIST LIFE. 9 

as low; down not only into banishment but into 
shameful imprisonment and almost into death. 
When Joseph was out of sight and all God's 
promises concerning him seemed lost, and his 
prospects seemed hopeless, then God picked 
Him up and set him on the world's throne. 

Moses had to be a fugitive. Moses had to try 
and then fail and for forty years God had to 
teach him and train him, and when at last Moses 
was out of sight, He gave him his desire. At 
the very last moment Moses had to let go 
the prospect of entering the Promised Land. 
He died outside the gates of Canaan, sacrificed 
his most cherished hope and waited till the years 
should roll and Jesus Himself should bring him 
in to stand with Him on the Mount of Transfig- 
uration and say, "Now, Moses, you have the 
thing you let go, the thing you lost and died to, 
and now you have a better resurrection/' And 
so it was all through the past. Saul would not 
give up himself, would not destroy Agag and 
Amalek; types of the flesh. So Saul, head and 
shoulders above the people, all that a man could 
be, went down into the darkness, sank into ob- 



10 THE SELF LIFE AND THE CHRIST LIFE. 

scurity and shame and perhaps perdition. And 
Jonah, the man whom God honored to deliver 
His own people and lead His kingdom into vic- 
tory and mighty power in the days of Jeroboam 
II, the man whom God honored to be the first 
foreign missionary, the man whom God hact 
picked up and sent to Assyria, and said, Go and 
preach to Nineveh, go bring the world to know 
and honor Me; and God mightily blessed 
him, so mightily that in that city the mightiest 
revival the world ever saw was consummated. 
And yet Jonah got angry because He did not 
kill all the people in Nineveh, and so compro- 
mised Jonah/s reputation. Jonah had said that 
the people would die in forty days and before 
the forty days were up the people repented of 
their sins and God repented of what He said and 
forgave them, and Jonah said, "Where am I in 
this transaction? I will never be believed 
again. Why did you not destroy Mneveh and 
save my reputation." And because Jonah could 
not let his own glory go, God had to dishonor 
him and leave him under the withered gourd, a 
sort of scarecrow to show to all generations how 



THE SELF LIFE AND THE CHKIST LIFE. 11 

contemptible it is to seek one's own glory. I 
think there is no more shocking and ridiculous 
spectacle than that poor old prophet sitting 
under his withered gourd scolding God ana 
begging to die just because God had dishonored 
him in fulfilling his mission in the repentance 
of the whole nation. And God just let him 
stand there as a spectacle of the shame and dis- 
honor of selfishness. 

We need not trace through the New Testa- 
ment the story of Simon Peter. The Masters 
last message to him when He restored him was: 
"When thou wast young thou girdest thyseli 
and walkedst whither thou wouldst; but when 
thou shalt be old, thou shall stretch forth thy 
hands and another shall gird thee and carry 
thee whither thou wouldst not. This spake He, 
signifying by what death he should glorify 
God/' And Jesus sent him to a life of cruci- 
fixion to be yielded, submissive, surrendered an<7 
led about by others against his natural choice 
till at last he should be crucified with down- 
ward head upon his Master's cross. 

The world says, look out for yourself; but 



12 THE SELF LIFE AND THE CHBIST LIFE. 

Jesus says, "Not I, but Christ." Not only your 
old self but the new man with all his strength 
and self-confidence, too, must die. Not only 
Ishmael must go out and be an outcast, but 
Isaac must be yielded and not hold up his 
head again. 

It is so easy to talk about this. The longer I 
live, the longer I know myself and friends, tlie 
more thoroughly I am satisfied that this is the 
great secret of failure in our Christian life. We 
come a little way with Jesus but we stop at 
Gethsemane and Calvary. They followed Him 
in His ministry in Galilee. The Sermon on the 
Mount was splendid morality. They loved the 
feeding of the thousands, and said, What a 
blessed King He would make! They would not 
have to work as they used to. But when He 
stands and talks about Calvary and speaks of 
the cross for them as well as for Him, and how 
they must go with Him and go with Him all the 
way, they say, "This is a hard saying, who can 
bear it?" 

And a few days after you could count them 
on your fingers. They said we do not under- 



THE SELF LIFE AND THE CHKIST LIFE. 13 

stand Him; We thought He would be a king. 
They were not willing to go to the cross. 

I am sure this is where multitudes have 
stopped short. They have said yes to self and 
no to God, instead of saying no to self and 
yes to God. Oh! it is so much easier to talk 
than to live! There is no use to talk about it 
unless the Holy Ghost shall bring it home to us. 
A writer has recently said that there are three 
baptisms to be baptized with. First, the bap- 
tism of repentance, then we turned from sin to 
God. Second, the baptism, of the Holy Ghost, 
when we receive the Holy Spirit to live in us. 
Third, the baptism into death, after the Holy 
Spirit comes in. While he, perhaps, has no 
Scriptural authority for this precise distinction, 
there is no doubt that there are these three steps 
to take. After you receive the baptism of the 
Holy Ghost, after God comes to live in you, 
after the Holy Spirit makes your heart His 
home, then it is that you have to go with Christ 
into His own dying, and so He says, "If any 
man will come after Me, let him deny himself 
and take up his cross daily and follow Me." 



14 THE SELF LIFE AND THE CHRIST LIFE. 

And so He said about Himself, "I have a bap- 
tism to be baptized with, and how am I straight- 
ened until it be accomplished." I have a burial 
to be buried with. He was going out into 
deeper dying every day, and His heart was all 
pent up with it, until He went down into Geth- 
semane, down to Joseph's tomb, and down into 
Hades' and He passed through the regions of 
the dead and opened first the gates of heaven. 
That is what Jesus saw before Him after He 
was baptized on the banks of Jordan. 

Oh! beloved, who have received the baptism 
of the Holy Ghost, it is yon who have to go 
down into His death. Now, I know that in a 
sense we take all that by faith when we conse- 
crate ourselves to Christ, and we count it all 
real and God counts it all real; but my dear 
friends, you have to go through it step by step. 
I know God treats us as though it was accom- 
plished, as though we were sitting yonder on the 
throne. But we must go through the narrow 
passage and the secret places of the stairs. 
There must be no fooling here. You may count 
it all done; but step by step it must be written 
on the records of your heart. 



THE SELF LIFE AND THE CHRIST LIFE. 

Now, my friends, what does all this mean? 
It is dying to self will. After you consecrate 
yourself to God then comes the tug of war, and 
tomorrow morning you will have the most aw- 
ful battle of your life. Just because you have 
given up your will, the devil wants you to take 
it back. Do not think it wall be an Elysian 
field; no, it will be a battle field; battles with 
the dragon and the fiery darts. The devil will 
try to show you how unreasonable it is, how 
right it is that j^ou should stand and have your 
will. It will be life or death perhaps for a 
week or for a month. Jesus went into the wild- 
erness for forty days, and the devil tried to have 
Him have His own will, but He stood the test. 
He let His own will go, "I came not to do Mine 
own will but the will of Him that sent Me." 

God could make Him a leader because He had 
been led. No man can govern until he has 
been governed. Joseph could not have been 
where he was in Egypt unless he had been sat 
upon by the people and then he sat there a 
broken man and a lowly, humble spirit. His 
brothers came down to see him. The world 



16 THE SELF LIFE AND THE CHRIST LIFE. 

would have said, Make them feel how mean 
they were and how wicked. God said, No, help 
them to forget it"; and so Joseph said, Don't be 
angry or grieved with yourselves, God meant it 
"for good/' If Joseph had not been humbled, 
he would have been no good as Egypt's ruler. 
No man can lead until he has been led. David 
had to have nine years of training, and it might 
have been better for him to have had nine more, 
then he would not have abused so shamefully 
his power when he got to the throne. Daniel 
in Babylon had to be disciplined by suffering 
before he could sit as Premier with Cyrus and 
Nebuchadnezzar. If God is going to make any- 
thing of you, let all your will go into His hands. 
You will find a good many tests after the first 
surrender, but these are just opportunities for 
allowing the work to be done. 

Then comes self-indulgence, doing a thing 
because you like to do it. No man has a right 
to do a thing for the pleasure it affords, be- 
cause he enjoys or likes it. I have no right to 
take my dinner just because I like it. This 
makes me a beast. I do it because 



THE SELF LIFE AND THE CHBIST LIFE. 17 

it nourishes me. Doing things because 
they please yourself, seeking your own 
interest, is wrong. "Seek ye first the 
kingdom of God and His righteousness." We 
have no Divine warrant to seek ourselves m 
anything. Seek God, and God will seek your 
good. Take care of the things of God, because 
He will take care of you. Look not any man 
on your own things, but on the things of others. 

Again, there is self-complacency, dwelling on 
the work that you have done. How easy after 
performing some service or gaining some victory 
to think "How good." How quickly this runs 
into vain glory! How many are more interested 
in what people think and say of them than 
what they are themselves. 

In the work of God there is nothing we need 
to so guard against as vanity. That was Jon- 
ah's curse. The seraphim covered their faces 
with their wings, they covered their feet with 
their wings. They covered their faces because 
they did not want to see their beauty, and their 
feet because they did not want to see their 
service, nor have anyone else see them. They 



18 THE SELF LIFE AND THE CHRIST LIFE. 

used only two to fly. Take care how yon put 
temptation in another's way. It is all right to 
encourage workers with a "God bless you." 
But don't praise. God does not say, How 
beautiful, how eloquent, how lovely, how splen- 
did! That is putting on a human head tlie 
crown that belongs to Jesus. I want the Holy 
Ghost to enable me simply to do you good, but 
I do not want power to bring me the honor of 
the world. If I had it, I should feel it the 
greatest peril of my life. We have no more 
right to take Christ's honors here than we have 
to sit on Jesus' throne and let angels worship us. 
We have to be so careful when God uses us to 
bless human souls. There is a sweetness which 
is not of God. God save us from all these snares 
woven by the tempter. 

Philip as soon as he had led the eunuch to 
Jesus got out of the eunuch's way. Beloved, 
there are subtle spells that come between man 
and man, and between woman and woman, and 
between man and woman. They seem sweet 
and right, but you need much of the Holy 
Ghost to keep your spirit pure. I am not talk- 



THE SELF LIFE AND THE CHEIST LIFE. 19 

ing here of sinful love. Surely, it is not need- 
ful to speak of that. I am thinking of a far 
more subtle and refined and spotless spell, which 
is more dishonoring to God and more dangerous 
to you, because it is so pure. God keep us 
from every service, and every friendship, and 
every thought that is not in the Holy Ghost and 
not to the honor of Jesus alone. 

Then there is self-confidence, that which feels 
its strength, spiritual or mental self-righteous- 
ness, power to be good or do good. God has to 
lead us to lay all that aside and realize our utter 
nothingness. 

Time will not permit me to speak of the self- 
life of sensitiveness, that fine susceptibility of 
your feelings to be wounded, and of selfish affec- 
tion, wanting people to love you because you 
like to be loved. Divine love loves that it may 
bless and do good. You ought to love not be- 
cause it pleases you, but because it blesses them. 
Paul could say, "I am glad to spend and be 
spent for your sakes, notwithstanding the more 
earnestly I love you the less I be loved." He 
does not say, I will help you as long as you love 



20 THE SELF LIFE AND THE CHRIST LIFE. 

me. No; I gladly spend my last drop of blood 
to bless yon at any cost even when I know you 
don't appreciate me the least bit. That is what 
is the matter with you. People hurt you, they 
don't appreciate you. Well, spend and be spent 
all the more when you are the less loved. 

Time would fail to tell of selfish desires, 
covetousness, selfish motives, selfish possessions, 
our property our own, our children our own, 
and they give us loads of trouble, and care, and 
worry, just because we insist on owning them. 

There are selfish sorrows. I know of nothing 
more selfish than the tears we shed for our own 
sorrows. When God saw Israel weeping, He 
was angry and said, "You have polluted My 
altar with your tears/' You are weeping be- 
cause you have not better bread. You are 
weeping because something else is dearer to you 
than Christ. You are weeping because you are 
not altogether pleased or gratified. 

Even our sacrifices and self-denials may be 
selfish. Yes, our sanctification may be selfish. 
A sarcastic friend of mine used to say when he 
heard people testify about their sinlessness, 



u 



THE SELF LIFE AND THE CHRIST LIFE. 21 

"Poor old soul, she committed the biggest sin 
of her life for she told the biggest lie." Self 
can get up and pray, and sit down and say, 
AVhat a lovely prayer!" Self can preach a ser- 
mon and save souls and go home, pat itself on 
the back and say, or let the devil say through 
him, "You did splendidly; what a useful man 
you are!" Self can be burned to death and be 
proud of its fortitude. Yes, we can have re- 
ligious selfishness as well as carnal selfishness. 

How can we get rid of this? Well, I think 
above everything else we must see the reality of 
the thing, we must see the danger of the thing, 
we must see that it is our sin. We must look at 
it frankly and choose that it shall go. The 
worst of it is that it deceives us so. It says 
"How that fits somebody else, not me." Many 
of you are shedding it on others and not taking 
it home. God means you. Pass sentence of 
death upon it or else it will pass sentence on 
you. You may keep it as long as you like. It 
is like the lovely little serpent with little spots 
on it like jewels. Ah — at the last — how it 
stings! 



22 THE SELF LIFE AND THE CHEIST LIFE. 

May God show us everything in us that will 
not stand the searching flames. Above every- 
thing don't let us have a bigger Gospel than we 
have a life. Having passed sentence of death 
upon yourselves then take Jesus Christ and the 
Holy Spirit to do the work. Don't try to fight 
it. 

Then when the test conies and God leads you 
out to meet the test, be true, be true. The 
test will come in that very line after you have 
taken the victory, and when the battle comes, 
forget yourself; don't defend yourself but say, 
Lord, keep me. Perhaps some one will try to 
provoke you. Perhaps some one wil try to 
praise you. Just say, Yes, the Lord let you 
come to see if I wanted to be appreciated. The 
Holy Spirit is able to take everything we dare to 
give and gives everything we dare to take. 
"He is able to keep you from falling and to pre- fc 
sent you faultless." What a blessed exchange 
it will be! Take the cross and we shall some 
day wear the crown, sit upon the throne, and 
all that He is we shall be, and all that He has 
we shall share. 



EESUEEECTED NOT EAISED. 

There is a great difference between risen and 
resurrected. One may rise from one level to 
another; but when one is resurrected he is 
brought from nothing into existence, from death 
to life, and the transition is simply infinite. A 
true Christian is not raised, but resurrected. 
The great objection to all the teachings of mere 
natural religion and human ethics is that we 
are taught to rise to higher planes. The glory 
of the Gospel is that it does not teach us to rise, 
but shows our inability to do anything good of 
ourselves, and lays us at once in the grave in 
utter helplessness and nothingness, and then 
raises us up into new life, born entirely from 
above and sustained alone from heavenly 
sources. 

The Christian life is not self -improving, but 
it is wholly supernatural and Divine. Now, the 
resurrection cannot come until there has been 
the death. This is pre-supposed, and just as 



24 THE SELF LIFE AND THE CHEIST LIFE. 

real as the death has been will be the measure 
of the resurrection life and power. Let us not 
fear, therefore, to die and to die to all that we 
would leave behind us and detach ourselves 
from, nay, to die to ourselves and really cease to 
be. We lose nothing by letting go and we can- 
not enter in 'till we come out. If we be dead 
with Him, we shall also live with Him. 

But the passage Col. iii. 1 expresses the 
fact we have already died and risen, and that 
we are now to take the attitude of those for 
whom this is an accomplished fact. He does 
not call upon them here to die again with Christ 
and rise with Him anew, as those who have done 
it, are expected to live on a corresponding plane. 
He tells them later, in the passage, "For ye have 
died and your life is hid with Christ in God." 

In the sixth chapter of Romans this thought 
is much more fully worked out. "As many of 
us as were baptized into Christ," the apostle 
says, "were baptized into His death. Therefore 
we have been buried with Him by baptism into 
death; that like as Christ was raised from the 
dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also 



THE SELF LIFE AND THE CHRIST LIFE. 25 

should walk in newness of life," and then to 
emphasize more forcibly the finality of this fact, 
he says, "Knowing that Christ being raised 
from the dead dieth no more; death hath no 
more dominion over Him; for in that He died, 
He died unto sin once; but in that He liveth, 
He liveth unto God." Therefore, and in like 
manner, the apostle bids us to "reckon ourselves 
dead also unto sin but alive unto God through 
Christ Jesus, and to yield ourselves unto God 
as those that are alive from the dead and our 
members as instruments of righteousness unto 
God." 

]STow, much of the teaching of the day would 
bid us yield ourselves unto God to be crucified 
and to die afresh, or more fully, but the apostle 
says nothing of the kind here. On the con- 
trary, we are to yield ourselves unto God as 
those who have already died and are alive from 
the dead, recognizing the cross as behind us; 
and for this very reason presenting ourselves to 
God, to be used for His service and glory. 

Have you never seen soaring in mid-heaven 
some glorious bird with its mighty pinions 



2b THE SELF LIFE AND THE CHKIST LIFE. 

spread upon the bosom of the air and floating 
in the clear sky without a fluttering feather or 
apparently the movement of a muscle? It is 
poised in mid-air; floating yonder, far above the 
earth below; it does not need to rise, it has risen 
and is resting in its high and glorious attitude. 
Very different is the movement of the little lark 
that springs from the ground and, beating its 
wings in successive efforts, mounts up to the 
same aerial heights to sing its morning song, 
and then returning again to earth. One is the 
attitude of rising and the other is the attitude 
of risen. 

Perhaps, you say, "How can I reckon myself 
dead when I find so many evidences that I am 
still alive, and how can I reckon myself risen 
when I find so many things that pull me back 
again to my lower plane? It is your failure to 
reckon and abide that drags you back. It is the 
recognizing of the old life as still alive that 
makes it real and keeps you from overcoming it. 
This is the principle which underlies the whole 
Gospel system, that we receive according to the 
reckoning of our faith. The magic wand of 



THE SELF LIFE AND THE CHRIST LIFE. 27 

faith will lay all the ghosts that can rise in the 
cemetery of your soul; and the spirit of doubt 
will bring them up from the grave to haunt you 
as long as you continue to question. The only 
way you can ever die, is by surrendering your- 
self to Christ and then reckoning yourself dead 
with Him. 

It is a portentous fact that spiritualism has 
power, apparently, to bring to life and to rehab- 
ilitate in the forms of flesh and blood the spirits 
of the dead. It is not an uncommon thing for 
a deceased father to appear to his child, and 
even speak to her in the old familiar tone, and 
tell of things that nobody could know but he, 
until the credulous mind is compelled to believe 
it is the same person, and that that buried 
father is truly alive. But it is not true. It is 
a lie. He is as dead as when you laid him in 
the tomb; his body is still there, corrupting in 
the ground, and his spirit is in the eternal 
world, although he seems to be alive. What 
does it mean? Why, it is one of the deviFs lies. 
Satan has personated that father. He has sup- 
ernatural power to paint upon the air the forms 



/ 



28 THE SELF LIFE AND THE CHRIST LIFE. 

of those that have passed away, and to speak 
from those lips until they seem to be real. 
This is one of the mysteries and yet realities of 
the present day, and no wise or well-informed 
man will attempt to dispute it. But the ex- 
planation is this: — It is simply a creation of 
Satan before your senses to deceive you. What 
is the remedy? Eefuse to recognize it. Keck- 
on it dead. Tell it to its face, it is not your 
father, but one of the devil's brood, and it will 
immediately disappear. There is one thing 
Satan cannot stand and that is to be ignored and 
slighted. He lives on attention and dies of 
neglect. And so if you will refuse to recognize 
that manifestation of spiritualism, you will al- 
ways find it disappear and have no power to con- 
tinue its movements. It is wholly dependent 
on the consent of your will. 

Now, here is a fine illustration of the prin- 
ciple of the Gospel. You surrender yourself 
unto Christ to be crucified with Him, and to 
have all your old life pass out, and henceforth 
to live as one born from heaven and animated 
by Him alone. Suddenly, some of your old 



THE SELF LITE AND THE CHRIST LIFE. 29 

traits of evil reappear, old thoughts, evil ten- 
dencies assert themselves and say loudly and 
clamorously, "We are not dead." Now if you 
recognize these things, fear them and obey 
them, you are sure to give them life and they 
will control you and drag you back into your 
former state. But if you refuse to recognize 
them, and say, "These are Satan's lies, I am 
dead indeed unto sin; These do not belong 
unto me, but are the children of the devil, I 
therefore repudiate them and rise above them/' 
God will detach you from them and make them 
utterly dead. You will find they were no part 
of you, but simply temptations which Satan 
tried to throw over you, and to weave around 
you that which seemed part of yourself. 

This is the true remedy for all the workings 
of temptation and sin. It is an awful fact that 
when one counts himself wicked he will become 
wicked. Let that pure girl be but made to be- 
lieve that she is degraded and lost to virtue and 
she will have no heart to be pure, and she will 
recklessly sink to all the depths of sin! Let the 
child of God but begin to doubt his acceptance 



30 THE SELF LIFE AND THE CHRIST LIFE. 

and expect to look upon his Father's face with 
a frown, and he will have no heart to be holy, 
he will sink into disobedience, discouragement 
and sin. 

There is a strange story written by a gifted 
mind, describing a man who was two men al- 
ternately. When he believed himself to be a 
noble character, he was noble and true, and 
lived accordingly; but when the other ideal took 
possession of him and made him feel degraded, 
he went down accordingly. "As a man think- 
eth in his heart, so is he." Our reckonings re- 
flect themselves in our realities; therefore, God 
has made this principle of faith to be the main- 
spring of personal righteousness and holiness, 
and the subtle, yet sublime, power that can lead 
men out of themselves into the very life of God. 

Beloved, shall we let the Master teach us 
noc so much to rise as to remember we are 
risen; that we have been raised with Christ 
from the dead, resurrected from the grave of 
our nothingness, and worse than nothingness, 
and that we are sitting with Him in heavenly 
places, recognized by the Father and permitted 



THE SELF LIFE AND THE CHEIST LIFE. 31 

to reckon ourselves as being "even as He." 

Our attitude will influence our aim. People 
live according to their standing. The high 
born child of nobility carries in his bearing 
and his mien the consciousness of his noble 
descent, and so those who have their title to 
be on high, and consciousness of their high 
and heavenly rank, walk as children of the 
kingdom. The remainder of this chapter is 
devoted to working out this most practical 
idea, because we have risen with Christ, there- 
fore let us live accordingly. 

The argument against lying is: we have put 
off the old man and put on the new man. We 
have ceased to be paupers and become princes. 
Therefore, we are to put off the rags of the beg- 
gar and wear the epaulette of the prince. We 
have put on the new man, therefore, let us 
put on the kindness, humbleness of mind, 
meekness, long-suffering, and over all that char- 
ity, which is a perfect girdle that binds all the 
garments together. The best of all our robes 
is Christ Himself; and we are to put on Christ. 
This resurrection life is intensely practical. 



32 THE SELF LIFE AND THE CHEIST LIFE. 

The apostle brings it into touch with the near- 
set relationships of life, with the family circle, 
with the position of masters and servants, and 
with all the secular obligations of life. It is to 
affect our whole conduct and aims and lead us 
to walk wherever we are called. 

This leads us to notice the practical power 
there is in this glorious fact, that we have been 
raised up together with Christ. It has power, 
in the first place, to confirm our hope and as- 
surance of salvation because the resurrection 
of Jesus was the finishing work and a guarantee 
to men and angels that the ransom price was 
paid and the work of atonement complete. 
When Jesus came forth triumphant from the 
tomb, it was evident to the universe that the 
purpose for which He went there was ful- 
filled, the work He undertook satisfactorily 
done, and the Father satisfied with His fin- 
ished atonement. Therefore, faith can rest 
upon His resurrection, as an everlasting foun- 
dation, and says: "Who is he that condemneth, 
it is Christ that died, yea, rather than is risen 
again." 



THE SELF LIFE AND THE CHRIST LIFE. 33 

Again, the resurrection of Christ is the 
power that sanctifies us. It enables us to 
count our old life, our former self, annihilated, 
so that we are no longer the same person in 
the eyes of God, or of ourselves; and we may 
with confidence repudiate ourselves, and refuse 
either to obey or fear our former evil nature. 
Indeed, it is the risen Christ Himself who 
comes to dwell within us, and becomes in us 
the power of this new life and victorious obed- 
ience. It is not merely the fact of the resur- 
rection, but the fellowship of the Eisen One 
that brings us our victory and our power. We 
have learned the meaning of the sublime para- 
dox, "I have been crucified with Christ Nev- 
ertheless, I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in 
me." This is the only true and lasting sancti- 
fication, the indwelling life of Christ, the Eisen 
One, in the believing and obedient soul. 

Again, there is power in the resurrection to 
heal us. He that came forth from the tomb 
on that Easter morning was the physical Christ, 
and that body of His is the Head of our bodies, 
and the foundation of our physical strength, as 



34 THE SELF LIFE AND THE CHRIST LIFE. 

well as our spiritual ife. If we will receive 
and trust Him, He will do as much for our 
bodies as our spirits, and we shall find a new 
and supernatural strength in our mortal frame 
and the pulses of the future resurrection in our 
physical being. 

Christ's resurrection has also a mighty power 
to energize our faith and encourage us to claim 
God's answers to our prayers, and ask difficult 
things from God. What can be too difficult 
or impossible after the open grave and the stone 
rolled away? God is trying to teach us the 
exceeding greatness of His power tousward "who 
believe according to His mighty power which He 
wrought in Christ when He raised Him from 
the dead and set Him at His own right hand/' 
This is the measure what God is able and will- 
ing to do in the name of Jesus under a Chris- 
tian dispensation. Christ's resurrection is a 
pledge of all we can ask for, and if we fully be- 
lieved in the power of that resurrection we 
would take much more than we have ever done. 

The resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ 
is the power for true service. The testimony 



THE SELF LIFE AND THE CHRIST LIFE. 35 

of His resurrection is always peculiarly used by 
the Holy Spirit as the power of God unto the 
salvation of men. It was the chief theme of 
the ministry of the early apostles. They were 
always preaching of Jesus and the resurrection. 
It gives a peculiar brightness and attractiveness 
to Christian life and Christian work. Many 
Christians look as gloomy as if they were going 
to their own funeral. We heard not long ago 
of a little girl who met some sad looking people 
on the road and she said, "Mother, those are 
Christians, aren't they?" And when the moth- 
er asked her why she thought so, she said. 
"They look so unhappy." 

This is the type of Christianity that comes 
from the cloister and the cross. This is not 
the Easter type, and certainly it is not the high- 
er type. The religion of Jesus should be as 
bright as the blossoms of the spring, the songs 
of the warbling birds and the springing pulses 
of reviving nature. Our Lord met the women 
on that bright morning with the cheering mes- 
sage, "All hail," and so He would meet each 
one of us on the threshold of the year and the 



36 THE SELF LIFE AND THE CHRIST LIFE. 

morning of a new Christian life and bid us go 
forth with the joy of our Lord as our strength. 

This joy must spring from the resurrec- 
tion and be maintained in a life beyond the 
grave, in the Heavenlies with its ascended Lord. 
This is the message that a sad and sinful world 
needs to-day. Its motto must not be the "Ecce 
homo" of the judgment hall, but the glad "All 
hail!" of the Easter dawn. The more of the 
indwelling Christ and the resurrection life in 
Christian work the more will be its living power 
to attract, sanctify and save the world. 

Again, Christ's resurrection to enable us 
to meet the hardest places in life and endure 
its bitterest trials. And so we read in Philip- 
pains that the power of His resurrection is to 
bring us into the fellowship of His suf- 
ferings, and make us conformable unto His 
death. We go into the resurrection life that 
we may be strong enough to suffer with Him 
and for Him. 

Now, let there be no misunderstanding here. 
It dos not mean that we are to suffor for our- 
selves through sickness or the struggles of our 



THE SELF LIFE AND THE CHBIST LIFE. 37 

spiritual life. These sufferings ought to belong 
to the earlier period of our experiences. Our 
Lord had no conflicts about His sanctification 
and no physical disease to contend with during 
His life. So, in bearing these, we are not bear- 
ing the sufferings of Christ. Nay, His suffer- 
ings are for others and the power of His resur- 
rection will bring us to share His high and holy 
sorrows for His suffering church and a dying 
world. It is a fact that the harder our place 
and the lower our sphere of toil and suffering 
the more do we need the elevation of His grace 
and glory to meet it. From the heights we 
must reach the depths. And, therefore, we find 
these epistles, which lift us into heavenly 
places, bring us back in every instance to the 
most commonplace duties, the most ordinary re- 
lationships and the most severe trials. These let- 
ters to the Ephesians and the Colossians which 
speak about the highest altitudes of faith and 
power, speak also more than any others of the 
temptations common to men, and the duties of 
husbands and wives, and the need of truthful- 
ness, sobriety, honesty and righteousness, and 



38 THE SELF LIFE AND THE CHRIST LIFE. 

all the most unromantic, practical experiences 
of human life. 

There is a very remarkable passage in Isaiah 
which we have quoted above and which seems 
to be parallel with the thought in Philippians. 
It tells us of those that mount up with wings 
as eagles; but immediately afterwards we find 
the same persons coming down to the ordinary 
walks of life, "to run and not be weary, to 
walk and not faint." It would seem as if 
the mounting up was just intended to fit them 
for the running and walking, and that the 
higher experiences of grace and glory were just 
designed to enable them to tread the lower lev- 
els of toil and trial. It is in keeping with this 
that the apostle speaks of glorying in tribula- 
tion. "Glory" expresses the highest attitude 
of the soul, and "tribulation" the deepest de- 
gree of suffering. And so it would teach us 
that when we come to the deepest and lowest 
place we must meet it in the highest and most 
heavenly spirit. This is going down from the 
Mount of Trausfiguration to meet the demoniac 
in the plain below, and cast out the power of 



THE SELF LIFE AND THE CHRIST LIFE. 39 

Satan from a suffering world. Yes, these are 
the sufferings of Christ. The power of His 
resurrection is designed to prepare, enable 
us and help us to rise into all the heights of 
His glorious life, that like Him we may go forth 
to reflect it in blessing upon the lives of others, 
and find even sweeter joy in the ministrations 
of holy love than we have in the ecstasies of 
Divine communion. 



& 



SAUL, OR SELF-LIFE LEADING TO 
DESTRUCTION. 

The place of Saul in Old Testament history- 
is significant and, we believe, typical of great 
spiritual truths. It is conceded that Israel's 
redemption from Egypt foreshadowed human 
redemption through the cross of Cavalry and 
the finished work of Christ. It is also beyond 
question that the triumph of Joshua and the 
conquest of Canaan pointed forward to the 
Pentecostal baptism and blessing of the Apos- 
tolic church and the deeper rest into which the 
Holy Ghost brings the individual Christian. 

The dark period of declension recorded in 
the book of Judges and the earlier chapters of 
Samuel were typical of the dark ages of 
Christianity, and the Reformation under Sam- 
uel was strongly parallel to our Protestant 
Reformation and the revival of the church of 
Christ from the bondage of mediaeval darkness 



THE SELF LIFE AND THE CHRIST LIFE. 41 

and superstition. A little farther on we shall 
find that the kingdom of David and Solomon 
was the type of Christ's Millennial throne. 

But what was the meaning of the strange 
parenthesis of Saul's life that came before the 
kingdom of David and Saul? Alas! it is the 
counterfeit kingdom which Satan is seeking to 
set up on the throne of human selfishness and 
worldly pride, instead of the true kingdom of 
the Lord Jesus Christ, and of which, alas! we 
have too many evidences in the compromising 
and worldly esslesiasticism of our day, and in 
the Laodicean picture which the Apocalypse 
has given of the church that is to be rejected 
at the coming of the Lord. 

But while this is the dispensational meaning 
of Saul's life, it has a still more solemn personal 
application for every individual Christian. It 
is God's fearful object lesson of the power and 
the peril of the self -life and the need of its ut- 
ter crucifixion before we can enter into the 
true kingdom of spiritual victory and power. 

I. We see the spirit of self in the very mo- 
tive that prompted the kingdom of Saul. Sam- 



42 THE SELF LIFE AND THE CHRIST LIFE. 

uel perfectly understood it as a virtual rejection 
of God as the supreme King of Israel and a real 
vain-glorious desire to be independent of Di- 
vine control and to be like the surrounding 
nations of the world. "Make us a king," they 
said, "to judge us like all the nations." No 
wonder that Samuel was deeply displeased and 
prayed unto the Lord, but God answered him: 
"Hearken unto the voice of the people in all 
that they have said unto thee; for they have 
not rejected thee, but they have rejected Me, 
that I should not reign over them." 

Nevertheless, Samuel still protested and sol- 
emnly warned them of the burdens and the ex- 
actions which their king would claim from 
them and the trouble they were bringing upon 
themselves, adding: "Ye shall cry out in that 
day because of your king, which ye have chos- 
en, and the Lord will not hear you in that day." 
But is was no use. They had set their heart 
upon their king and they answered: "We will 
have a king over us, that we may also be like 
all the nations; and that our king may judge 
us and go out before us and fight our battles. * 



THE SELF LIFE AND THE CHKIST LIFE. 43 

This is the spirit of the prodigal, saying. 
"Father, give me the portion of goods that f all- 
eth to me." It is the desire of independence 
which is the very root of human sin, and it is 
the spirit of conformity to the world into which 
self-life aways develops. We see it in the spir- 
it of worldly conformity in the church to-day, 
and we are conscious of it in our own natural 
hearts as that broad, self -asserting and domin- 
ant I which makes man a God unto himself 
and refuses to surrender his will to Christ, or 
yield the direction of his life to the will of 
God and the government of the Holy Ghost. 

Therefore, the very first step in the new life 
must ever be surrender; and the essential con- 
dition of the baptism of the Holy Ghost is to 
yield the very last point to God, and even the 
things which may in themselves be harmless 
must be first surrendered if for no other rea- 
son than to prove our will is wholly laid down, 
and that God is all in all. 

II. We see the spirit of self in the character 
of Saul, and the qualifications which made 
him the choice and the idol of the people. Saul 



44 THE SELF LIFE AND THE CHRIST LIFE. 

was the very embodiment of the human. He 
represented all that was most strong, chival- 
rous, attractive and promising in human nature. 
He was of splendid physique, a head taller than 
all the people, a magnificent specimen of physi- 
cal manhood, and "every inch a king." 

He possessed the intellectual, moral and so- 
cial qualities that constitute a great public 
leader. He was brave, heroic, enthusiastic 
and generous, and the early years of his reign 
are adorned with some stirring examples of 
heroic deeds. He was all that the human 
heart would choose. He represented the best 
possibilities of human nature, and as the people 
looked at his splendid figure they shouted again 
and again that patriotic cry which has so often 
re-echoed since, and which has so seldom been 
fulfilled as a prayer to heaven, "God save the 
king." 

God had to let this man stand before the 
ages to show that man at his best is only man 
and the human self-sufficiency must end in fail- 
ure and desperate sorrow. This is the lesson 
that God is trying to teach His children still. 



THE SELF LIFE AND THE CHRIST LIFE. 45 

How few of them have found it out so fully 
that they can say, "I know that in me, that is in 
my flesh, dwelleth no good thing." The sen- 
tence of death has passed upon the flesh, and 
there is but one thing that we can do with it — 
to nail it to the cross of Jesus Christ, to reckon 
it dead, and to keep it forever in His bottom- 
less grave. 

III. The spirit of self in Saul was combined 
with much that was good and attractive, both 
naturally and spiritually. Naturally, we have 
seen that he was not only a man of princely 
bearing, but of many noble and heroic qualities. 
He had also a most beautiful family, and Jona- 
than, his son, is the most attractive figure in 
the long gallery of Bible characters. 

When Saul came to Samuel and was first 
called to the kingdom he seemed to have many 
elements of sterling virtue and genuine hu- 
mility. Like a dutiful son, he went to search 
for his father's asses, and then he went to the 
prophet Samuel to ask counsel about finding 
them. When he came to Samuel and was told 
his extraordinary message and anointed to be 



46 THE SELF LIFE AND THE CHRIST LIFE. 

king there was no unbecoming self-conscious- 
ness about him. He kept hie secret with dis- 
cretion and modesty, and even in telling his 
uncle about the words of Samuel, he said noth- 
ing to him about the greater message concern- 
ing the kingdom. When he left the presence 
of Samuel he did just what he was told, and 
when he met the company of prophets he joined 
them and received a real baptism of the Spirit 
like them, and prophesied among them with 
genuine religious enthusiasm. And even when 
they sought for him to bring him out before 
the people and announce to him their choice as 
the national ruler, they could not find him, for 
he was hiding among the stuff and he seemed 
a very paragon of modesty and unobtrusive- 
ness. And yet this was the very man who let 
the dark and dreadful shadow of himself blight 
his own life and ruin his kingdom and his fam- 
ily. Oh, how self-deceptive is the human spir- 
it. Oh, how pride itself will hide away in the 
very guise of deepest humility! In speaking 
of his earlier life the prophet Samuel pays a 
tribute to his earlier humility "When thou 



THE SELF LIFE AND THE CHRIST LIFE. 47 

wast little in thine own sight," he says, "wast 
thou not made the head of the tribes of Israel, 
and the Lord anointed thee king over Israel?" 
We cannot doubt that Samuel's language is 
perfectly sincere, and that he is giving Saul 
credit for at least a measure of genuine humil- 
ity. What then was the defect? May it have 
been this? It is one thing to be little in our 
own eyes, it is another thing to be out of our 
own sight altogether. True humility is not 
thinking meanly of ourselves, it is not think- 
ing of ourselves at all. What we need is not 
so much self-denial as self-crucifixion and ut- 
ter self-forgetfulness. The perfect child is 
just as unconscious in the highest place as in 
the lowest, and the true spirit of Christ in us 
recognizes ourselves as no longer ourselves, but 
so one with the Lord Jesus that we man truly 
say: "Not I, but Christ who liveth in me." 
"By the grace of God I am what I am." 

But what are we to learn from this com- 
bination of so many excellencies in one life and 
its ultimate failure and ruin? Alas, w r e are to 
learn that Satan's choicest wile is to mingle the 



48 THE SELF LIFE AND THE CHRIST LIFE. 

good with the evil and to cover his poison as 
a sugar-coated pill, because he knows we would 
never take it in its unmixed and undiluted evil. 
Satan's choicest agents are those that are at- 
tractive and naturally lovely. Esau was a 
more winning man naturally than Jacob; but 
Esau was lost and Jacob was chosen. You may 
be beautiful, you may be wise, you may be cul- 
tured, you may be moral, you may be useful, 
you may be noble and generous, and yet, with- 
al, you may be living for yourself and, at last, 
like Saul, self-destroyed. Satan doesn't want 
your property outright now; he only wants 
a mortgage on it, and he is content to take a 
mortgage for a thousand dollars if he cannot 
get one for a hundred thousand. He can wait 
for the day of foreclosure. All he wants is to 
have his hand in it. It is the mixed lives that 
are doing the mischief. 

"Wherefore, come ye out from among them, 
and be ye separate, and touch not the unclean 
thing, and I wil receive you, and will be a 
father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and 
daughters, saith the Lord God Almighty." 



THE SELF LIFE AND THE CHRIST LIFE. 49 

IV. The first test came to Saul in an hour 
of severe trial when, beleagured by his enemies 
and deserted by almost all his soldiers, he 
seemed to be facing destruction. Waiting 
seven days for Samuel to come and begin the 
battle by the usual sacrificial offering, Saul at 
lost grew discouraged and impatient, and then 
he presumed to take upon himself the priestly 
functions which belonged only to Samuel, and 
to offer up the sacrifice without waiting for the 
prophet. As he was offering it, Samuel came 
and instantly pronounced upon Saul the ter- 
rible sentence: "Thou hast done foolishly; 
thou hast not kept the commandment of the 
Lord thy God, as He commanded thee; for now 
would the Lord thy God have established thy 
kingdom upon Israel forever, but now shall thy 
kingdom not continue. The Lord hath 
sought Him a man after His own heart, and 
the Lord hath commanded him to be captain 
over His people, because thou hast not kept 
that which the Lord commanded thee." 

Many a life succeeds while all is successful, 
but in the hour of trial self always shows itself. 



50 THE SELF LIFE AND THE CHRIST LIFE. 

Saul was a splendid king until the first great 
trial met him, and then he became discouraged, 
distrustful, self-asserting and presumptuous, 
and dared to take in his own hands the things 
that belonged only to God. He usurped the 
throne of God Himself and showed his true 
nature. He was a man of his own heart and 
not of God's heart, and henceforth God sought 
Him a man after God's heart who should do 
God's will and not his own, and thus be a true 
representative of Israel's true King. 

As soon as Saul had shown himself in his 
real character, God immediately delivered the 
people out of their peril by two feeble men — 
Jonathan and his armor-bearer — that He 
might show to Saul how little he needed his 
strength or any human strength or wisdom, 
and how all-sufficient God was to those who 
truly trusted Him. Even this victory Saul al- 
most wrecked by his interference and wilful- 
ness, and it became apparent by his own folly 
that he could not be trusted with God's work, 
and that his persistent self-will would always 
hinder the will and the work of God. 



THE SELF LIFE AND THE CHRIST LIFE. 51 

Not instantly did the crisis come. God 
let this spirit of self work out to its full devel- 
opment slowly; but it was evident from this 
hour that Saul's life must fail, and that Sam- 
uel's prophecy was, alas, true. 

V. God gave another opportunity and a 
second test. He sent Saul on an important ex- 
pedition to destroy Amalek, the race of Esau 
that had tried to hinder Israel in their passage 
through the wilderness. There is a deep spir- 
itual meaning back of this story; for Amalek 
was a type of the flesh; and the destruction of 
Amalek was just an illustration of the very prin- 
ciple which Saul's life so strongly emphasizes, 
and Saul's failure to destroy Amalek is, there- 
fore, the more significant because it shows how 
deeply rooted the self -principle was in his own 
soul. The man who spared Agag was the man 
who spared the principle of self in his own 
heart; and the two pictures blend with an 
awful significance for every one of us. 

Saul successfully accomplished the invasion 
and returned victorious. He even seems to 
have been so possessed with the spirit of self- 



52 THE SELF LIFE AND THE CHRIST LIFE. 

complacency that he failed to realize his own 
true character until Samuel uttered his fear- 
ful words of doom. "Yea, I have obeyed the 
commandment," he cried with perfect assur- 
ance, and when the awful words of the prophet 
answered back: "Obedience is better than 
sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams." 
"Because thou hast rejected the word of the 
Lord, He also hath rejected thee from being 
king; it is doubtful if even then Saul fully 
realized the nature of his sin. So subtle and self- 
deceiving is the spirit of self that even then all 
he seemed to feel was the fear of being humil- 
iated before the people, and he begged the 
petty bauble of Samuel's public recognition 
and honor, and this little bit of vain-glory was 
the solace and the comfort of his wretched 
soul in the hour when the sentence of death 
and ruin was thundering in his ears. 

What a spectacle of complacent self-decep- 
tion; the snare of a religious motive, keeping 
the spoil to sacrifice to the Lord! We see the 
fear of man, the unwillingness of this weak 
man to displease the people when they begged 



THE SELF LIFE AND THE CHRIST LIFE. 53 

him to save the precious booty of Amalek. 

But one word above all others seems to crys- 
tallize the very element of this stupendous 
folly. It is the word "compromise." Saul 
obeyed, but with a compromise. Saul did much 
good, but he compromised with evil. God's 
commandments are uncompromising, inexor- 
able,unqualified, and our obedience must be in- 
flexible absolute and complete. The 
faintest reservation is really the very soul of 
disobedience. The failure even to hearken to 
the full meaning of God indicates a spirit of 
unwilling obedience. 

Saul stands before us in this picture the in- 
carnation of self-will and, therefore, the enemy 
of God, nay, the rival of God upon His very 
throne. Could there be any other issue? 
"Thou hast rejected the word of the Lord, the 
Lord hath rejected thee from being king." 

VI. Not immediately did the judgment cul- 
minate. Slowly still, the coil of self unwinds 
until all its hidden sinuosities have been re- 
vealed. Saul did much work after this, much 
good work, fought many battles, fought them 



54 THE SELF LIFE AND THE CHRIST LIFE. 

well, reigned over Israel, and established 
a powerful kingdom, but it was Saul's king- 
dom and not God's. All the re- 
maining years were years of self-activity and 
self-vindication. For nine years he pursued 
David, his rival, with ferocious hate. The 
Spirit of God left him, and an evil spirit, by 
God's permission, possessed him; and as the 
years went on, the beginning and the end of 
his existence was Saul and not Jehovah. It 
was self incarnate with all its miserable works 
and fruits. 

VII. At last the culmination came. Eaten 
out by the canker of self, his heart became the 
dwelling place of Satan. The devil took en- 
tire possession of him, and in one dreadful hour 
he gave himself up to spiritualism, and, rejected 
of the Lord, sought the counsel of necroman- 
cers, whom he had formerly persecuted and 
banished from his kingdom. It was the last 
fatal step. Self had driven God from the 
throne, and now it gave it to Satan and the 
next chapter of self -life was self-destruction. 

Trembling and prostrated by the fearful vi- 



THE SELF LIFE AND THE CHRIST LIFE. 55 

sion which his own presumption had brought 
up from the depths of Hades, Saul dashed with 
reckless despair into the last battle of his life, 
and the next day the tragedy was complete — 
the flower of Israel's youth was lying on the 
slopes of Gilboa — the army of Saul was annihil- 
ated — the Phillistines were victorious on every 
side — the kingdom which Saul had built up for 
a quarter of a century for himself was broken 
to pieces and scattered to the winds — Saul's 
sons were lying dead on the mountain sides, and 
Saul himself, a wretched suicide, had gone to 
his own place. The scorpion, self, had stung 
others, and now, at last, it stung itself to death. 
The revelation of human selfishness was com- 
plete, and before the sad and fearful spec- 
tacle we may well stand in awe and humbly, 
earnestly and fervently pray: 

Oh, to be saved from myself, dear Lord, 

Oh, to be lost in Thee! 
Oh, that it might be no more I, 

But Christ that lives in me. 



AGAG, OE THE SUBTLETIES OF 
THE SELF-LIFE. 

"And Samuel said, Bring ye hither to me Agag, 
the king of the Amalekites. And Agag came unto 
him delicately. And Agag said, Surely the bitter- 
ness of death is past. And Samuel said, As thy 
sword has made women childless, so shall thy 
mother be childless among women. And Samuel 
hewed Agag to pieces before the Lord at Gilgal." 
I Sam. xv. 32, 33. 

"We have already referred to this passage as 
an illustration of the character of Saul. There 
is still a deeper type of the subtleties of the self- 
life in the picture of Agag which the Holy 
Ghost has framed into the narrative of this 
solemn history. Saul and Agag both teach the 
same great lesson and warning, namely the peril 
of a self-centered life, but they teach it in 
somewhat different ways, and the story of Agag 
is worthy of our prayerful and heart-searching 
consideration. 

J. His Kace. He belonged to the race of 



THE SELF LIFE AND THE CHRIST LIFE. 57 

Amalek and the family of Esau, who represent 
through their entire genealogy the life of the 
flesh. From the very beginning of the human 
race God has drawn the line of demarcation 
between two races — the fleshly and the spiritual 
man. Just outside the gate of Eden the divi- 
sion began. The family of Seth called them- 
selves by the name of the Lord, and the race 
of Cain went off and built their city of culture 
and pride and became the pioneers of the world- 
iness and wickedness adorned and ameliorated 
by all the grace of human culture and all the 
attractions of earthly delight. The separation, 
alas! soon began to disappear and in the days 
of Noah the two races had mingled and inter- 
married, and the progeny was a generation of 
monsters of iniquity so degenerate and de- 
praved that God turned with loathing from the 
whole race and pronounced the awful sentence. 
"The end of all flesh is come before me, I will 
destroy man from off the face of the earth." 
After the flood God chose a separate family, 
the line of Abraham, and again endeavored to 
keep the chosen people separate. All along 



58 THE SELF LIFE AND THE CHRIST LIFE. 

that line we see the earthly off-shoots of the 
family-tree separating from the central trunk 
and going out into the world. The first of 
these was Ishmael, the type of the spirit of 
bondage and sin. The next of these 
was Esau, the progenitor of a whole 
race who inherited the earthly spirit of bondage 
and sin. The next of these was Esau, the prog- 
enitor of a whole race who inherited the earthly 
spirit of their father, who, for a morsel of meat, 
sold his birthright and afterwards married with 
the daughters of Canaan and became as cor- 
rupt and polluted as they. In the same line 
were the descendants of Lot's unnatural daugh- 
ters, the Moabites and the Ammonites. 

Above all these, the race of Esau and 
Amalek were the representatives of the spirit of 
the flesh and the world.. This was the reason 
that God pronounced the decree of their ex- 
termination. We find that when Israel went 
out of Egypt and started on their journey 
through the wilderness on their way to the 
Land of Promise, Amalek was the first to attack 
them. It is not difficult to see in this the fore- 



THE SELF LIFE AND THE CHRIST LIFE. 59 

shadowing of the fact that the first adversary 
that we have to contend with when we leave 
our sinful past of bondage and iniquity is the 
carnal nature in our own hearts, which soon 
asserts itself and tries to force us back to "the 
gall of bitterness and the bond of iniquity." 
This is what Agag represents and this is what 
each of us has found to our cost to be a very 
real element in the experience of a Christian 
life. 

II. The name of Agag is next significant. 
It is from the root "Hak/ which is a generic 
form denoting, like Pharoah, a ruler. It lit- 
erally means ruler, and represents the spirit of 
self-will, self-assertion and independence in the 
human heart. Its prototype is Lucifer, the 
prince of light and glory, who, being lifted up 
with pride and refusing to be controlled, turned 
from an angel to a fiend, and has become the 
desperate leader of the rebellious hosts of hell. 
We see it next in the supreme temptation of the 
Fall — "Ye shall be as gods" — the desire for su- 
premacy. We see it in the spirit of human am- 
bition, in the Oriental despot, in the world con- 



60 THE SELF LIFE AND THE CHRIST LIFE. 

queror, in the society belle and the political 
"boss." All belong to the same family. They 
are of the race of Amalek and the house of 
Agag. Their cry is like the prodigal, "Give 
me the portion of goods that f alleth to me" and 
let me go away from parental control and do 
as I please. 

There is no country where it is so rampant 
as our own. It appears to us as young man- 
nishness and calls itself liberty, but its end is 
license, lawlessness and Anti-christ, that Law- 
less one who is yet to embody the ele- 
ments of human wickedness and pride, and end 
the present dispensation by defying God and 
man and perishing, like his father, the devil, in 
his presemptuous pride. This spirit is found 
in every human heart. It may be disguised in 
many insidious forms. It may call itself by il- 
lustrious names and ape the highest ambitions 
and the noblest pretensions, n ut it is Agag and 
Satan every time. The thing in you that wants 
to rule, wants to have its own way, to be inde- 
pendent, refuse control, to despise reproof, is 
wrong in its very nature. The very first 



THE SELF LIFE AND THE CHRIST LIFE. 61 

thing you need in order to be of any use any- 
where is to be thoroughly broken, completely sub- 
jected and utterly crucified in the very core and 
center of your will. Then you will accept dis- 
cipline and learn to yield and obey in matters 
in themselves indifferent and your will will be so 
merged in His that He can use you as a flex- 
ible and perfectly adjusted instrument, and 
henceforth you shall will only what God wills 
and choose only what God chooses for you. 

This is the real battle-ground of human sal- 
vation; this is the Waterloo of every soul; this 
is the test question of every redeemed life. 
This was the point where Saul lost his king- 
dom and Agag lost his life, and where still 
the eternal destinies are lost or won as we learn 
the lesson or refuse to be led in triumph by our 
conquering Lord. 

Beloved, let us mark it well. Let us not 
miss the warning. Let us remember forever 
that no man can rule others until he himself 
is absolutely led of God, that no man can con- 
quer foes till he first is conquered, that no man 
can lead in triumph the hosts of evil or the 



62 THE SELF LIFE AND THE CHEIST LIFE. 

hearts of men until he himself is led in triumph 
the willing captive of the Saviour's love and 
the Master's will. 

III. The Decree of Extermination. God 
has determined that the race of Amalek and 
the house of Agag should be utterly extermin- 
ated. They were not to be spared, but to be de- 
stroyed. It was a case of no compromise. There 
was nothing good in them. The least element 
of Agagism was destructive and the whole com- 
munity, with all their goods and belongings, 
must be put out of existence just as the ef- 
fects of a household where some one has died of 
contagious disease must be wholly given to the 
flames. Now, this is God's decree against the 
flesh in us. It cannot be cleansed. It cannot 
be improved. It cannot be cultivated. It 
cannot be educated into ideas and principles. 
It must be exterminated. Now, what is the 
flesh? Is it the bad principle in man? 
Is it some outward or inward evil which 
can be cut away like a tumor by a surgical 
operation? Listen, "The carnal mind is en- 
mity against God, for it is not subject to the 



THE SELF LIFE AND THE CHRIST LIFE. 63 

law of God, neither, indeed, can be. So, then, 
they that are in the flesh cannot please God." 
There is the ■uncompromising decree of the 
total depravity and the hopeless condition of 
the flesh. But now what is the flesh? Listen 
again: "But ye are not in the flesh if so be 
that the spirit of God dwell in you." There is 
the distinction clear as a ray of celestial light. 
Every man who has not the spirit of God is in 
the flesh, therefore, everything outside the spir- 
it of God is flesh. Therefore, the flesh is not 
simply the sinful part of human nature, but the 
whole of human nature. It is the Adam race. 
It is the natural man. It is the whole creature, 
and the whole thing is corrupt and polluted. 
The tree is so crooked you cannot straighten 
it without cutting it in two. The tumor is so 
interwoven with the flesh that you cannot cut it 
without killing the man. There is no remedy. 
There is no hope. The old life must be laid 
down and the new creation, wholly born out of 
heaven and baptized with the Spirit of God, 
must take its place as a resurrected life, as a 
new creation, as an experience so supernatural 



64 THE SELF LIFE AND THE CHBIST LIFE. 

and Divine that its possessor can truly say, "1 
am no longer the former man, I have died and 
Christ has taken my place. It is no longer I, 
But Christ that liveth in me." 

Don't try to sanctify the flesh. Don't at- 
tempt to evohitionize the kingdom of heaven 
out of the kingdom of hell. It is not evolution, 
it is creation. It is not morals or manners, it 
is a miracle of grace and power. Take no risks 
upon the old man. He will fail you every 
time. You may think your trained hawk is a 
dove, but in an unsuspecting moment its beak 
will be buried in your flesh. Your little wolf 
may have all the manners of the lamb, but in 
an evil hour it will destroy all your lambs and 
perhaps rend you limb from limb. It is hope- 
lessly, eternally corrupt. It cannot please God. 
It must be utterly dethroned, renounced and 
crucified with Christ. 

IV. We see next the attempt of man to com- 
promise with the flesh and to disregard this Di- 
vine decree of its extermination. Saul spared 
Agag that he might grace his triumph, and he 
kept the best of the spoil that he might sacrifice 



THE SELF LIFE AND THE CHKIST LIFE. 65 

unto the Lord his God. He obeyed the com- 
mandment of the Lord to a certain extent. He 
defeated Amalek and destroyed the nation in 
a sense. He did all God told him as far as it 
was agreeable, and he took his own way just 
where it was pleasant. His obedience, there- 
fore, was not really obedience to God, but truly 
self-will. He retained just enough of the flesh 
to destroy the whole service. The very es- 
sence of the disobedience was compromise. The 
very worst thing about it was that he tried to 
put the evil to a good use. It was a very insult 
in the face of heaven to bring the forbidden 
thing and offer it to the God he had defied. 
ISTow this is just the spirit of modern religious 
culture. Don't go too far. Don't be extreme. 
Don't be puritanical. Go easy. Be liberal 
Meet the world half way. Marry that scoundrel 
to save him. Take that saloon keeper into the 
church because you can make good use of his 
money. Put that brazen faced woman up in 
the choir because she will draw her theatrical 
set to hear her sing. Go to the theatre and the 
play with your husband to get him to go to 
church with you on Sunday. 



66 THE SELF LIFE AND THE CHRIST LIFE. 

Nonsense. In the first place in such an un- 
equal contest on the enemy's ground the devil 
will always get the best of you, and instead of 
being saved the husband will drag to his level 
the woman that ventured on forbidden ground. 
The operatic singer, instead of bringing her set 
under the influence of religion, will bring the 
church to the level of her set and turn it into a 
club-house and a concert-room. The saloon 
keeper's money will moderate the tone of the 
preaching so that it will be a comfort unto 
Sodom, and vice and sin can sit unchecked, and 
even count itself the very buttress and pillar of 
the cause of the holy Christ. 

Think you that God will accept such service? 
Will He who owns the treasures of the universe 
and could create a mountain or a mine of gold 
in a moment, and send a thousand angels to 
sing in His sanctuaries, will He accept the 
money that is stained with the blood of souls 
and polluted with the filth of dethroned pur- 
ity and honor? Will He accept the meritri- 
cious service that is sold for sordid gain? Will 
He go begging to the devil's shrine, and asking 



THE SELF LIFE AND THE CHRIST LIFE. 67 

his permission to let go his captives that they 
may be saved? Shame upon our unfaithful- 
ness and our compromise! Oh, for the sword 
of a Samuel to hew in pieces the compromises 
that are an offence to heaven and a disgrace to 
the Bride of the Lamb. 

V. We see the fawning pleading of the flesh 
for indulgence. Agag came forth, walking 
delicately, mincing like a silly, coquettish girl, 
smiling, seeking by his blandishments to dis- 
arm opposition, to win favor, looking like an 
incarnation of gentleness and innocence. A 
perfect gentleman! Surely, he could not harm 
a child! Surely, no one could dream of doing 
him harm! Ah, that is the old flesh pleading 
for his life, pointing out its refinement, its cul- 
ture, its graces, the good that it is doing and 
wants to do, its claim upon your consideration 
and regard. It will decorate your church with 
the finest taste; it will sing in your choirs with 
all the harmonies of classical music and attract 
crowds; it will bring society to your church; it 
will give you a bright and liberal theology. It 
is full of humanitarian plans for the relief of 



68 THE SELF LIFE AND THE CHRIST LIFE. 

the suffering and the uplifting of degradation, 
and it offers yon a Pullman palace car prepaid 
to the gates of heaven. 

Surely, such a beautiful gentle creature 
should not be rudely slain. But back of all its 
disguises and fawnings the Holy Ghost will 
show you, if you will let Him, the serpent's coil, 
the dragon's voice and the festering corpse of 
the charnel house. 

Death is not always repulsive at the first 
sight. The daughter of Jairus was beautiful in 
her shroud, and a flush of life still lingered on 
her cheek, but she was as dead as Lazarus fes- 
tering in his tomb. And so that sweet-faced 
girl, with her fawning charms, that brilliant 
minister with his intellectual sophistries, that 
voice that sings like an angel in the choir, are 
as corrupt and polluted as that poor creature 
that lies in yonder hospital dropping to pieces 
in the last stages of corruption, or that red- 
handed assassin reeking with the blood of his 
victim. They are both flesh, only at different 
stages of their moral putrefaction. 

VI. We see in Agag the flesh feigning death. 



THE SELF LIFE AND THE CHRIST LIFE. 69 

"Surely," said Agag, "the bitterness of death 
is past." And so you will find plenty of people 
in pulpits and pews, on platforms and in ob- 
scure corners, who would make you believe that 
they are utterly dead, and yet who remind you 
when you get a good look at them of corpses 
walking around in their grave clothes. They 
are so conscious of their deadness that you 
know they are alive. They are so proud of 
their humility that you would rather they were 
proud than humble. They are so constantly 
in their own shadow that they try you by their 
religious egotism. Surely, dead people don't 
know it, don't think about it, are unostenta- 
tious, unobtrusive, modest, simple, natural, 
free, and, like good water, without taste, color 
or consciousness. Oh, for this blessed simpli- 
city and this place of self -forgetting rest! Oh, 
for this fulfillment of the prayer, "Lord, let me 
die so dead that I won't know it." 

Beloved, there is no danger so great, espe- 
cially among Christians somewhat advanced, 
as that of counting ourselves in a place where 
we really do not live. There is nothing so 



70 THE SELF LIFE AND THE CHEIST LIFE. 

hardening to the heart as to take the place of 
self-surender and then live a life of self-in- 
dulgence, self-will and adding to it the greater 
fault of self-complacency; calling things holy 
which are not, bringing the standard down to 
our own experience and filling ourselves with a 
self-complacent dream. Truly, we are to reck- 
on that we are dead indeed. We are not to reck- 
on that we are reckoned dead, but we are to 
reckon on a reality, and we are to insist upon it 
and take nothing less from God or from our- 
selves. Oh, that we would dare to call things 
by their right names and have no counterfeit, 
even from ourselves. 

VII. We see self exposed and slain. Agag 
could not deceive Samuel. The old man 
pierces him through with one glance of the 
Holy Ghost, and looking at his mincing, fawn- 
ing figure, we can imagine him saying, "I know 
you with all your fawning. You are an old 
murderer. You are a selfish, cruel tyrant. 
Your sword has made many a mother childless, 
many an innocent victim has been crushed be- 
neath your lust or hate, and back of all your 



THE SELF LIFE AND THE CHKIST LIFE. 71 

smiles there is a skeleton and a serpent's sting." 
And then with that sharp sword he cut through 
his blandishments and hewed him to pieces be- 
fore the Lord. 

A notorious woman, who has been the star 
of the vaudeville stage for the past year in this 
wicked metropolis, has had in her role a hid- 
eous song, in which one verse may be translated 
"Go Bring Thy Mother's Heart to Feed My 
Dog." It is a true picture of that diabolical 
selfishness that seeks to hold the very soul of 
her idolatrous admirer in her power, that can 
even make him rend his loving mother's heart 
to please his devlish mistress. That is the 
skeleton back of the society queen. That is 
the serpent coiled around the heart of beauty 
and pride. 

You say, "that is the darkest and worst pic- 
ture." Ah, sin never stops till it reaches its 
worst, and God shows us in a single sample the 
possibilities of the evil to which the tiniest seed 
and fairest bud of selfishness may yet ripen. 

Beloved, let us ask God to expose it in our 
hearts. Let us open our being to the sword of 



72 THE SELF LIFE AND THE CHRIST LIFE. 

Samuel, which is just the sword of the Holy- 
Ghost. It is described in the Epistle to the 
Hebrews in these solemn, searching, but blessed 
words: "The Word of God is quick and power- 
ful, sharper than any two-edged sword, pierc- 
ing even to the dividing asunder of soul and 
spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a 
discerner of the thoughts and intents of the 
heart." 

All that we need to be delivered from any 
form of self and sin is to really be willing to 
see it, to recognize it, to call it by its right 
name, to throw off its disguise, to brand it with 
its true character, to pass sentence of death 
upon it, to stand to the sentence without com- 
promise, to consent to no reprieve, to give God 
the right to slay it, and then" there is power 
enough in the sword of the Spirit, in the fire 
of the Holy Ghost, in the blood of Calvary, in 
the faithfulness and love and grace of God to 
make us dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto 
God through Jesus Christ our Lord. 



JONAH, OK THE SHADOW OF SELF. 

"Therefore now, O Lord, take, I beseech Thee, 
my life from me; it is better for me to die than to 
live." Jonah iv. 3. 

This was the best prayer that Jonah ever 
uttered, if he had only really meant it in the 
right sense. The greatest need of Jonah's life 
was to die to Jonah, and his life is just a great 
object lesson of the odiousness and the foolish- 
ness of the spirit of selfishness in any mortal, 
especially in any one who professes, or pretends, 
to work for God and the souls of men. Selfish- 
ness is always odious and out of place; but it is 
never so much so as it is in the man who pro- 
fesses to represent a crucified Eedeemer and a 
loving God. 

The story of Jonah is soon told. He was the 
first of the prophets whose writings have come 
down to us in the sacred canon. He lived in 
the reign of Jeroboam II, and it was through his 
instrumentality that that powerful monarch 



74 THE SELF LIFE AND THE CHBIST LIFE. 

was enabled to raise Israel from the deep de- 
pression into which the nation had fallen, and 
restore her to the highest point of power and 
greatness in all the history of the nation. 

Sent as the prophet of good tidings to his own 
people, he gladly went and by his inspired mes- 
sages cheered on his countrymen, until they 
had subdued their enemies on every side, and 
won back their long-lost territory from all their 
foes. 

Had Jonah/s career terminated at this point 
he would have gone into history as one of the 
most successful and brilliant of Israel's long line 
of splendid prophets. But God gave him a 
new commission, and sent him unexpectedly 
with a message of warning to the city of Nine- 
veh, the mighty capital of the Assyrian Empire. 
This was to Jonah most unexpected and unwel- 
come. An enthusiastic patriot he did not want 
to do anything that could bring the favor of 
God to the hated enemies of his country. And 
so the whole self-will of the man rose up in re- 
bellion, and he determined not to go. Dis- 
obedience always brings separation from God, 



THE SELF LIFE AND THE CHRIST LIFE. 75 

and so Jonah was inevitably driven from the 
presence of God, and looked about for some 
place where he might escape from the All-See- 
ing Eye whose glance he could not bear. 

It was not difficult to find a chain of provi- 
dences all working in the direction he wanted 
to go. And finding a ship at Joppa bound for 
the coast of distant Tarshish, he secured a pas- 
sage at once and started for the chosen hiding- 
place. He was soon overtaken by the messen- 
gers of God's mercy and judgment, and, thrown 
into the sea as a sacrifice to appease the storm, 
he was swallowed by the great fish which God 
had prepared, and then thrown out from his 
living tomb, a resurrected man, where God's 
message met him again — his commission was re- 
newed to go to Nineveh, and preach the preach- 
ing that God commanded. 

This time he went without any evasions or 
questionings, and for a time it really seemed 
that he was indeed a crucified man. But alas 
for human self-assertion! it was not long before 
Jonah came to the surface again. As long as 
his work succeeded and the people listened and 



76 THE SELF LIFE AND THE CHRIST LIFE. 

repented, he was satisfied; but when God, in His 
mercy, met the penitence of the Ninevites with 
His mercy, and cancelled His judgment upon 
them, Jonah was bitterly disappointed and 
fiercely angry because his reputation as a proph- 
et had been ruined by the failure of his threat- 
enings; and sitting down under the shade of a 
gourd outside the city gates he fretted and 
scolded like a petulent and angry child, and 
finally he passes out of sight altogether, under 
his withered gourd, as a spectacle of humilia- 
tion and contempt, all the glory of his really 
wonderful work blighted by the dark shadow of 
himself which he threw over it in his egregious 
folly and unspeakable selfishness. 

There are many lessons taught us by this ex- 
traordinary life. 

I. We see a man who succeeds most wonder- 
fully in religious work, so long as his work is 
congenial, but fails completely and utterly 
breaks down under the first severe test of real 
character. Jonah did splendid work so long as 
everything went all right; but the moment 
things went against him, he went to pieces. 



THE SELF LIFE AND THE CHRIST LIFE. 77 

How many of us there are who in the sunshine 
of religious prosperity seem to be extraordinary 
workers and even ideal saints. It is the test 
that tells. Character is more than work, and 
God is leading us, if we will only let Him, 
through the tests which will bring us to the 
death of self, and to the place where He can 
use us as 

Only His messengers ready, 
His praises to sound at His will, 

Or willing should He not require us 
In silence to wait on Him still. 

II. We see in him a man who obeys and 
serves God as long as it suits him, but is a 
stranger to that obedience which knows no 
choice except the Master's will. "Ye are My 
friends," the Master says, "if ye do whatsoever 
I command you." It is no evidence of friend- 
ship to Christ to do some things to please Him, 
to do much that is good and right; the true 
friend does whatsoever He commands. 

III. We see in Jonah a man destitute of the 

true missionary spirit, a man who thought he 
was full of zeal, yet had no real love for God or 



78 THE SELF LIFE AND THE CHRIST LIFE. 

the souls of men. Jehu had zeal enough, but it 
was zeal for his own cause. Jonah represents 
those people who will work as hard as you please 
for their own cause, even for the church, and 
the work which centres in their own sect, or 
family or country, but they know nothing of the 
real missionary spirit. They care not for the 
Nmevites, the Chinese, or the Africans, and 
they think it unreasonable waste to pour out 
our hundreds of thousands of dollars for the 
evangelization of the world, instead of spend- 
ing it at home, and using it to promote the wel- 
fare of our own people. 

IV. A man running away from God. 

When we disobey God, we shall soon want to 
leave His presence altogether. Adam's single 
sin soon led to Adam's separation from his 
Creator, and we find him hiding from the pres- 
ence of God. It is idle to think that you can 
indulge in any act of disobedience, and still 
look up in your Father's face and call yourself 
His child. 

Jonah had no difficulty in finding means to 
carry on his purpose. The devil has his provi- 



THE SELF LIFE AND THE CHRIST LIFE. 79 

dences as well as the Lord. The ship was all 
ready, and it was going to the right place, and 
Jonah was soon on board, and comfortably 
asleep in his berth. Alas, the saddest thing 
about backsliding is, that it brings with it the 
devil's sedatives, and the soul can calmly sleep 
amid the fiercest storm, and complacently dream 
that all is well. There is nothing in all the 
judgments of God so terrible as a reprobate 
mind and a soul past feeling. 

V. A man pursued by God's police, and 
brought to his senses by the trials and troubles 
which he brings upon himself and others. 
Thank God for the mercy that will not let us 
rest in our self-complacency and sin. Happy 
for us that we have a Father who loves us well 
enough to hurt us and drive us home to His 
loving breast. The saddest part of the trouble 
of the backslider is, that he brings it upon oth- 
ers, and that he has to suffer becaus of his sin 
and folly. 

Jonah's shipmates were the first to feel the 
effects of his disobedience, and to wake him up 
from his foolhardy insensibility. Many a time 



80 



THE SELF LIFE AND THE CHEIST LIFE. 



it is not until our fortunes have been wrecked 
and our families broken-hearted, that we find 
out the secret of all our troubles, and come back 
to Him who has smitten only that He might 
heal us, and broken only that He might bind 
us up. 

What a pity that we should compel God to 
bring us back to Himself by the officers of judg- 
ment, instead of flying to the arms of His love 
and choosing the blessing which he is deter- 
mined we shall not lose. 

VI. We see in Jonah a man who had to die 
to himself before he could do any real good. 

The great lesson of Jonah's life is the need 
of crucifixion to the life of self. Our Saviour 
has used the story of Jonah as the special type 
of His own death and resurrection, and we know 
that our Saviour's cross is the pattern of ours, 
and that as He died, so we should die to the life 
of self and sin. 

In the story of Jonah we see God lovingly 
slaying the selfish prophet, and trying to put 
Jonah out of his own way, so that God could 
bless him as He really wanted to. Surely, if 



THE SELF LIFE AND THE CHRIST LIFE. 81 

ever a man had a good chance to die, it was 
Jonah, and if he didn't, it was his own fault. 
He speaks of that living tomb himself as the 
belly of Hades — the very bosom of death, and 
the prayer that he uttered, when in those awful 
depths, certainly sounded like the voice of a 
man who meant what he said; and when he 
came forth, it really did seem as if Jonah was 
going to out of the question henceforth. But 
alas! as we shall see later, he was only half dead 
yet. God cannot use any but a crucified man 
to preach about the crucified Saviour. 

When Jonah came forth from the depths of 
death he was ready to go anywhere that God 
wanted him, and when we are dead to self and 
sin we will not have any question to ask except 
this one: "Lord, what wilt Thou have me to 
do?" Then we will go to Ninevah, or China, or 
any place the Master sends us, with glad and 
willing hearts. 

VII. But we see in Jonah a man who, after 
all, was only half dead, notwithstanding all his 
suffering and humiliation. 

For a time he goes right on faithful and 



82 THE SELF LIFE AND THE CHRIST LIFE. 

obedient. He preaches to the Mnevites the 
preaching that God bids him, and the most 
wonderful revival that ever attended any min- 
istry follows his words, until from the king on 
the throne to the meanest of his subjects, the 
people of Mneveh are prostrate at the feet of 
Jehovah, and pleading for mercy. 

But the moment that God hears their cry 
and disappoints Jonah's predictions of their 
destruction, the prophet breaks completely 
down and falls into a fit of petulenee and anger, 
because God had failed to do what he had 
threatened and destroyed his reputation as a 
prophet. 

It was but another form _of the same old self - 
life. A man may give up the selfishness that 
seeks its gratification in the pleasures of the 
world, and yet may seek the gratification of the 
same self-life in some religious form. A woman 
may cease to be the queen of society and the 
idol of her hero worshippers, yet she may drink 
in the sweet delight of her influence and sway 
over the minds and hearts of men, in her very 
work for Christ, and the influence that she 



THE SELF LIFE AND THE CHRIST LIFE. 83 

wields over the hearts that she brings under her 
religious sway. 

The orator, as he holds spellbound the hearts 
of thousands, even when he tells them of Jesus 
and salvation, may be just as selfish and self- 
conscious as the actor on the stage, or the poli- 
tician on the rostrum who speaks only for his 
personal triumph and ambition. Jonah's very 
success was his snare, and led him to forget his 
Master's glory and the real good of the people 
that he was sent to save, in thinking of his own 
success and his own glory. 

God never can use any man very much till he 
has grace enough to put himself entirely out 
of His work; for He will not give His glory to 
another nor share with the most valued instru- 
ment the praise that belongs x to Jesus Christ 
alone. 

We can never succeed in our service for God 
till we learn to cast our own shadow behind us 
and lose ourselves in the honor and glory of our 
Master. It is said that Alexander the Great 
had a famous horse that nobody could ride. 
Alexander at length attempted to tame him. He 



84 THE SELF LIFE AND THE CHEIST LIFE. 

saw at a glance that the horse was afraid of his 
own shadow, and so, leaping into the saddle one 
day and turning the horse's head to the sun, he 
struck his spurs into the flanks of the noble 
steed, and dashed off like the lightning. From 
that hour the fiery charger was thoroughly sub- 
dued, and he never gave his master any trouble 
again. He could no longer see his own shadow. 

Oh, that we could look into the face of our 
Lord, and then forever forget ourselves! Then 
He could use us for His own glory and afford to 
share with us the glory and gladness of our 
work. 

VIII. We see in Jonah a man whom God 
had to humble in the dust to save him from 
destroying his own work. 

God loves to make us partakers with Him in 
the fruits of our work. So He honored Moses 
and Samuel and Paul, and their names have 
come down to us associated with their blessed 
service for the Master; but this was because 
they loved to forget themselves, and seek only 
their Master's glory. How different it was with 
poor Jonah! He was seeking his own glory, 



THE SELF LIFE AND THE CHRIST LIFE. 85 

and God had to humiliate him, and let him fail 
altogether in the very thing he wanted. Sure- 
ly, "God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace 
unto the humble." Surely, he that would be 
chiefest may well become the servant of all; for 
the Master has said, "If any man will come after 
Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross 
and follow; Me for he that will save his own life, 
shall lose it, and he that will lose it, shall keep it 
unto the life eternal." "If any man serve Me 
let him follow Me, and if any man serve Me. 
him will My Father honor." 

Poor Jonah lost this honor, because he sought 
it, and Paul found it, because he renounced it, 
and sought only to live that Jesus might be 
satisfied, even if Paul should be forever for- 
gotten. This is the spirit of true service, and 
surely this is the solemn lesson that comes down 
to us through that humiliating spectacle, sit- 
ting, disappointed and rejected under his with- 
ered gourd, after the most successful ministry 
ever given to a human life, but one which 
brought no recompense to him, because he did 
it for himself. 

IX. We see in Jonah the picture of a man 



86 THE SELF LIFE AND THE CHEIST LIFE. 

who wants to die when he is least prepared to 
die. 

It was a very great mercy that God refused to 
take him at his word, when he cried with child- 
ish petulance, "Lord, I beseech Thee, take away 
my life from me; for it is better for me to die 
than to live." Let us be very careful how we 
utter reckless prayers. Poor Elijah asked to 
die one day in a fit of discouragement, and we 
only hear of him once again as a prophet. 

Jonah asked in a petulant moment that he 
might die, and from that moment Jonah dis- 
appears from the page of history and passes into 
an oblivion which has upon it no ray of hope or 
light of recompense. The best way to be pre- 
pared to die is to be living for some high and 
noble purpose. The men that are ready to die 
are the men that are needed most to live for 
God and their fellow men. 

X. We learn one more lesson from Jonah's 
life, and that is the true secret how to die, and 
then how to live for God and our own highest 
interest and blessing. 

Thank God, Jonah's life lifts our thoughts to 



THE SELF LIFE AND THE CHRIST LIFE. 87 

another and a nobler lif e, even that of the Lord 
Jesus Christ, who has died for us, and taught 
us not only how to live with Him, but also how 
to die with Him, and live the life that has been 
crucified with Christ, and is alive forevermore. 

Not unwillingly, but with His whole heart 
did He lay down His precious life for us that in 
His dying we might be saved from death eter- 
nal, and then learn to die with Him, the life of 
unselfish love for God and men. 

Wot for His own glory did He live and die, 
but for us and for His Father. He died for us 
that we might live; yes, He died for us that we 
might die, and then live the crucified life and 
the life that is dead to self and sin. 

Only through His dying can we truly die. 
We never can crucify ourselves, but we can be 
crucified with Christ, and say: "Nevertheless I 
live; yet not I, but Christ that liveth in me, and 
the life that I now live in the flesh, I live not 
unto myself, but unto Him that died for me, 
and rose again." 

Thus let us learn to die, and thus let us live, 



88 THE SELF LIFE AND THE CHEIST LIFE. 

and some day we shall know all the meaning of 
these mighty words: 

He died for me that I might die, 
He lives for me that I might live, 

Oh, death so deep! oh, life so high! 
Help me to die, help me to live. 



*. 



EESUEEECTED, NOT EAISED. 

Besurrected with my Bisen Saviour, 

Seated with Him at His own right hand; 

This the glorious message Easter brings me. 
This the place in which by faith I stand. 

Men would bid you rise to higher levels, 
But they leave you on the human plane. 

We must have a heavenly Eesurrection; 
We must die with Christ and rise again. 

Once there lived another man within me, 
Child of earth and slave of Satan he; 

But I nailed him to the Cross of Jesus, 
And that man is ncthing now to me 

Now Another Man is living in me, 
And I count His blessed life as mine; 

I have died with Him to all my own life; 
I have risen to all His life Divine. 

Oh, it is so sweet to die with Jesus! 

And by death be free from self and sin. 
Oh, it is so sweet to live with Jesus! 

As He lives the death-born life within. 



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